Branded Bodies and Living Bath Toys

Hey, Team.

I wanna talk about wrestliiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggguuhhhhhh lmao hulk hogan died

Here’s what’s on the docket:

Last month I watched MJF unmask Místico and, because I’m somehow still seven years old, I nearly had a meltdown at work. Místico, son of Dr. Karonte, brother of Argenis, nephew of Tony Salazar, cousin of Magnus. And he got his mask ripped off. It was devastating, it was horrifying. He’ll fight another day, but damn. MJF truly is the heel’s rudo. Damn. Just damn. Lucha Legacies and Wrestling Family Dynasties are part of something I’ve been calling Branded Bodies. I’m working my way toward a real line of thought on this one, so bear with me. For now, this is what I’ve got cooking in my noodle:

It’s a non-stop circuit of performance and branding. Heels turn faces and then find themselves teleported onto the silver screen (sort of). John Cena was a heel for a while there, then he had a redemption, and now he’s a giant bath toy (more on that later). I get the feeling Cody Rhodes’ team is angling for him to have a similar trajectory. He’s a (baby)face, which is a great start according to my data. He’s getting bit parts in comedies, next on the ladder is a scene stealing side character, and from there it’s the Gunn range. Dwayne Johnson and Dave Bautista made similar jumps from the ring to the screen, both are genre staples, but both have serious roles and ambitions outside of the typical genre fare. While this may or may not be getting kneecapped by their wrestling background, I’m going to point toward racial bias in Hollywood as the load bearing factor. Pain and Gain should’ve brought some awards home for Dwayne, and I’m always going to be saying this!

The children who rise in fame are like apprentices taking over the shop, rather than privileged kids experiencing varying degrees of denial about just how much it helps who their mommy and daddy are. When a wrestler is someone’s kid, it’s like they’re carrying on the family business and grudge, a blood feud in spandex. Cody Rhodes, the son of wrestling legend Dustin Rhodes, is also the half-brother of Golddust. Cody used to enter the ring under the name of Stardust. Gilded with a black star across his eyes, it was a glam rock turn that clashes with the King-of-the-fight-club-behind-the-Sheetz Americana ultra-masculinity he envelops himself in today (said with respect).

The reality show Total Divas follows the lives of female WWE wrestlers, their personal lives, their business ventures, the usual hashtag girlboss fare, as well as the pressures of legacy. Natalya, as I recall in earlier seasons, is particularly plagued by anxiety about her father’s (Jim “the Anvil” Neidhard) legacy. What she brings to the ring is a continuation of what her father had achieved before her. Trinity, aka Naomi, married into the Anoa’i family, a massive family of professional wrestlers from the Samoan Islands. In a sense, she married into royalty and every thing she achieves is to maintain her worthiness of the family she’s entered.

Being born into or marrying into a wrestling family isn’t quite as silver spoon as being born into, say, the house of Coppola. There are certainly insanely wealthy and privileged wrestlers, but there’s a blue collar element that can’t be shaken. Wrestling is seen as hokey, backwater, tawdry. There’s a classism at play that both stunts and uplifts its players. Wrestling and Lucha Libre performance art that are, by design, extremely accessible to folks of a lower income bracket. Both in terms of participation and spectating. Because of this, it’s deemed cheap and lowbrow. But it's a sweaty Commedia del’arte. It’s farce and melodrama with pile drives. Sophocles wrote a heel turn arc when he dropped Antigone. If you want to get really nasty with it, it’s American Kabuki.

Speaking of bath toys! I already wrote at length about the characterization of Superman in the most recent film, you can read that on your own time. I want to be annoying about Nicholas Hoult and Edi Gathegi and Anthony Carrigan. Also I’m worried about Sean Gunn getting too Hollywood for the Gilmore Girls festival that I’m still too nervous to attend. But that’s neither here nor there.

Welcome back, evil Nick! I haven’t seen you since 2007!

Spoiler: Lex Luthor loses. In the finale, Luthor’s grip of power is shattered by Lois Lane’s reporting. Two prongs of thought here.

The fact that it is a human journalist who destroys him is the real proof that Lex never really considered humans his comrades. Heck, if he considers scientific greats to be twits, then a journalist must be a slug rolling into a salt mine (that he owns). He’s disgusted by metahumans yet still views himself as something beyond a standard human. His intelligence is so high someone might even mistake it for metahuman ability, or so he might say.1 Actually, while I have you here, why not just hit him with a metahuman diagnosis? It’d be like the hillbilly-hating villain in Tucker and Dale vs Evil being, in fact, part hillbilly. Get his ass. Anyway.

It’s very tasty to have a human being, Lois Lane, employ that hard work ethic this character is always spouting as proof of human superiority in the comics, and be the actual arbiter of Lex’s doom. He never once considered humans to have any actual merit. If he had, he could’ve prevented all of this. A very good characterization of Luthor!

The other prong. There’s a moment when he turns from the news broadcasts, cradling his shattered arm, and stares at Superman with an expression of stunned rage. But as he weeps, something in his eyes grows cold. I saw it and got so amped for mask-off villain Lex Luthor. Total abandonment of the altruistic schtick and a full embrace of doing everything possible to just murder Superman. He sits in the back of a police vehicle and Hoult believably looks like he’s made a pact with himself to kill. He really looks like he’s going to kill! Wow!

Let me tell you, I’m still furious about Darwin. I wasn’t even that invested in the movie X-Men: First Class, but I know disrespect when I see it. Darwin is a mutant whose whole thing is survival. And they killed him. Immediately. And then never brought him back despite apparently promising Gathegi they would. Dumb and rude. Mr. Terrific is a character I really only knew as the guy that sometimes mans the computer or something in Justice League Unlimited and a vague awareness of him being associated with Plasticman. As a Mister Miracle dipshit, I’m inclined to enthusiasm for an under-the-radar character getting a spotlight run. His fight scene set to Noah and the Whale’s “5 Years’ Time” was designed in a lab to make my entire brain tingle. His cool demeanor that’s really just a constant state of irritation disguised by a low voice and almost expressionless persona was also designed in a lab to appeal to me.2 I do look forward to more from this character, more screen time for Edi Gathegi, and also I’m hoping this means new interest in Mr. Terrific as a character in general. By extension, I hope interest in Mr. Terrific leads to other Black heroes in the DCU getting their overdue time in the sun. People are picking up Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman, but what’s to stop them from reading other Superman stories by Morrison and getting introduced to Steel? You know? It’s exciting when people get into comics because comics can actually be anything. It’s not all just capes in there. I mean, a lot of it is capes, sure, but starting with capes then sprawling out from there can expose a person to storytelling and art that simply cannot exist anywhere else.3 (so pay comic industry people more and give them appropriate credit as well as payment for their work when it is brought into film and tv, what the fuuuuuuuuuuck is wrong with you assholes)

He’s back in the DC universe, baby! Gotham is a pile of dogshit but there were some gems in the filth. Penguin’s rise to power, BD Wong as Hugo Strange, Professor Pyg’s introduction,4 and the brightest jewel of them all: Anthony Carrigan as Victor Zsasz. Of course there’s pedantic nerd shit annoyance about his overreliance on guns, but I'm a cool and normal person that watched all of Gotham and I can tell you it’s not a problem at all, he was a star. He is a star! He made a star! Honestly I’m just writing this bit to admit to watching Gotham very earnestly.

I like the implication that because Max Lord exists in this universe, Calendar Man doesn’t.

A term I’ve started using to identify figures that are easily marketable with a deceptively shallow iconography. Often in scifi, always in action, I call them “bath toys.” GI Joes plunged into sudsy water and flung into the air, splashing the linoleum in an imagined epic that lasts for as long as the water is warm. This is also a muddy little bolus squishing around in my throat, so please continue to bear with me.

They’re sanitized, but not so much that you can completely dismiss them as “safe.” And because everything is political, occasionally I fling accusations of propaganda. Entertainment exists to be consumed and disseminated at large, who or what is a bath toy is a projection of Where We Are At. Grimdark edgy stories are indicative of relatively cushy times. And by relatively cushy I mean white guys have to share some rights with non-white guys and they simply don’t know how to handle it. Not many bath toys can be found within these dehydrated ropes of tendon. Hopeful, optimistic, inspiring stories start getting spread around when Things(tm) are going to shit. Maybe they’re intended as a message of “if we hold on to each other, we’ll make it through,” maybe they’re placation attempts akin to suggesting yoga for chronic pain. Maybe they’re both. But its within these soapy waters the bath toys float. The bath toy is a figure that operates like a mascot in a theme park: if a kid gets lost they feel safe running to grab their hand.5 Comforting in their consistency, exciting in their possibility. They’re an attractive shape powered by charming antics. They’re ready made for mass production, mass soothing.

When I was little, I had a plastic naval battleship that never fully dried out, its hull permanently sloshing with bathwater. That’s what I visualize when I define the appeal of Superman or why Star Wars keeps a grip on the public consciousness. It’s why there’s apparently a company policy to never put a moratorium on the Joker. And it’s also why sometimes imbuing a character with sexuality really really doesn’t work, even if you’re intentionally targeting a slightly more mature audience (cough cough Samurai Jack). So I am finding it interesting that there’s no real attempt to remove sexuality. Superman definitely fucks. The Mandalorian is a hot priest to be tempted away from his practice. Andor.

But still they are all, in their own way, an Iowa-class battleship rendered in polypropylene.

The only local Flamenco dance studio here is owned by a former IDF soldier what the fuck

I really think people just want to worship something. “When ChatGPT Becomes Your Spiritual Guide”

Hey look something about Wrestling being legitimate theater

Revenge Has A Drug-Like Quality!!! I could’ve told you that!!!!! “Bad Brains”

The panopticonception of Love Island meant that America, much like a father figure in a Tennessee Williams play, was a nonentity that somehow still grips the fate and/or psychosexual well being of everyone on stage. “Love Island USA Was Ruined By The USA”

…and I’m literally always saying that!! (I don’t know how to embed videos here!!!!!!!!!!! I’m also literally always saying that!!!!!!!)

Okay, that’s all for now, Team. Talk soon (threat)!

1

It’s that complex that only prejudice can supply: hating and coveting characteristics of the the other, believing oneself superior while simultaneously fearing their prowess in some arena or another.

2

a person who is always angry about something but for whatever reason when I express anger, no one registers it. people only think i’m angry when i’m talking about something i have no heightened feelings about. And i’m supposed to be the one that can’t understand other peoples’ emotions? whatever

3

read snotgirl or i will appear in your mirror

4

(not later when it’s revealed he’s a hitman which is so. stupid)

5

and i can’t figure out how to word this in a cool way: when the kid is brought to their parents, the mascot is also completely viable for mom and/or dad to lust after. or something! idk! moms love these guys idk what to tell you!